Less sobbing in the US trailer of Hachiko. I guess it's because teh story isn't as well-known as in Japan. But I'm sure that people will moved by Hachiko A Dog's Tale.
Here below a few official posters of Hachiko A Dog's Tale, aka Hachi:
So much affection between the Akita dog Hachi and his master (Richard Gere)!
Actor Richard Gere's interest in Asia is not limited to Buddhism and to the Dalai Lama: he's also been touched by the story of Hachiko, a dog of breed Akita who lived in Japan more than half a century ago and who rose to fame because of his unconditional love for his owner. Gere has been so moved that he's been pushing for an American movie adaptation of the story (some people would say a remake of the Japanese movie based on the same true story), even going to co-produce the film with his own money!
Director Lasse Hallstrom has been hired to helm the film. Richard Gere takes the lead role. The movie Hachiko A Dog Story is also starring Joan Allen and Sarah Roemer. It will be released on August 8, 2009 in Japan, so we may expect a US release by year end.
Here below the first official movie trailer of Hachiko A Dog Story:
Active content removed
Plot:
"A college professor (Richard Gere) takes in an abandoned dog, Hachi, and they form an unbreakable bond. After the professor dies while away from home, the dog keeps vigil waiting for his master for nearly a decade."
Cast:
- Richard Gere as Parker, the professor
- Joan Allen as the professor's wife
- Sarah Roemer as Andy, the professor's daughter
- Jason Alexander as Carl
The story of Hachiko is really moving. It's like a mirror story of Marley and Me. Those cute dogs are irresistible! I'm sure I will cry a bit with this movie too!
Don't miss Richard Gere and his Akita dog in the movie Hachiko A Dog's Story!
Last year, CNN sneaked onto the set of Hachiko A Dog Story, the tale of a long-life devotion of a dog to its
Nice look to the behind the scenes of the movie Hachiko A Dog's Story: filming took place in Rhodes Island.
If you're wondering about the breed (race) of the dog Hashi, it's an Akita, a really cute Japanese dog.
Here below some pictures of the film Hachiko A Dog Story, upcoming movie directed by Lasse Hallstrom and starring Richard Gere: (Click on a picture to enlarge it.)
They are so lovely together! The dog Hachiko is much more cute than the aging Richard Gere though.
The movie Hachiko A Dog' Story is based on a true story that took in first half of the 20th century in Japan. We may learn more thanks to Wikipedia:
***
In 1924, Hachiko was brought to Tokyo by his owner, Hidesaburo Ueno, a professor in the agriculture department at the University of Tokyo. During his owner's life Hachiko saw him off from the front door and greeted him at the end of the day at the nearby Shibuya Station. The pair continued their daily routine until May 1925, when Professor Ueno didn't return on the usual train one evening. The professor had suffered a stroke at the university that day. He died and never returned to the train station where his friend was waiting.
Hachiko was given away after his master's death, but he routinely escaped, showing up again and again at his old home. After time, Hachiko apparently realized that Professor Ueno no longer lived at the house. So he went to look for his master at the train station where he had accompanied him so many times before. Each day, Hachiko waited for Professor Ueno to return. And each day he didn't see his friend among the commuters at the station.
The permanent fixture at the train station that was HachikÅ attracted the attention of other commuters. Many of the people who frequented the Shibuya train station had seen Hachiko and Professor Ueno together each day. Realizing that Hachiko waited in vigil for his dead master, their hearts were touched. They brought Hachiko treats and food to nourish him during his wait.
This continued for 10 years, with Hachiko appearing only in the evening time, precisely when the train was due at the station.
***
The people of Japan was so touched by this heartfelt example of a dog's devotion for his owner that a statue a bronze statue in Hachiko's likeness was erected at Shibuya Station: (Click on the picture to enlarge it.)What an incredibly touching story! Hachiko was such a great dog! Such stories make you wish to have a pet!
We are years away from the development of a teleportation machine like the transporter room on Star Trek's Enterprise spaceship. The laws of physics may even make it impossible to create a transporter that enables a person to be sent instantaneously to another location, which would require travel at the speed of light.
For a person to be transported, a machine would have to be built that can pinpoint and analyze all of the 1028atoms that make up the human body. That's more than a trillion trillion atoms. This machine would then have to send this information to another location, where the person's body would be reconstructed with exact precision. Molecules couldn't be even a millimeter out of place, lest the person arrive with some severe neurological or physiological defect.
In the Star Trek episodes, and the spin-off series that followed it, teleportation was performed by a machine called a transporter. This was basically a platform that the characters stood on, while Scotty adjusted switches on the transporter room control boards. The transporter machine then locked onto each atom of each person on the platform, and used a transporter carrier wave to transmit those molecules to wherever the crew wanted to go. Viewers watching at home witnessed Captain Kirk and his crew dissolving into a shiny glitter before disappearing, rematerializing instantly on some distant planet.
If such a machine were possible, it's unlikely that the person being transported would actually be "transported." It would work more like a fax machine -- a duplicate of the person would be made at the receiving end, but with much greater precision than a fax machine. But what would happen to the original? One theory suggests that teleportation would combine genetic cloning with digitization.
In this biodigital cloning, tele-travelers would have to die, in a sense. Their original mind and body would no longer exist. Instead, their atomic structure would be recreated in another location, and digitization would recreate the travelers' memories, emotions, hopes and dreams. So the travelers would still exist, but they would do so in a new body, of the same atomic structure as the original body, programmed with the same information.
But like all technologies, scientists are sure to continue to improve upon the ideas of teleportation, to the point that we may one day be able to avoid such harsh methods. One day, one of your descendents could finish up a work day at a space office above some far away planet in a galaxy many light years from Earth, tell his or her wristwatch that it's time to beam home for dinner on planet X below and sit down at the dinner table as soon as the words leave his mouth.
Introduction to Quantum Teleportation
What is teleportation? Roughly speaking, there is a Lab A and a Lab B, and each lab has a box. The goal of teleportation is to take any object that is placed in Box A and move it to Box B.
Of special interest to science fiction fans (among others) is human teleportation, where a brave telenaut (whom we shall call Jim) enters Box A and uses the teleportation machine to travel to Lab B.
It turns out that human teleportation appears possible in principle, though is probably impossible in practice. Nevertheless, teleportation of much smaller objects like individual spins is not only possible, but has been accomplished in the laboratory. Our goal here is to explain both how teleportation is done and why it is interesting.
The discussion below is part of a talk I gave at the International Summer School for Young Physicists held at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada. The talk was intended for some very smart high-school students, but most of the discussion below should be accessible to a wide audience.
Only the non-technical sections of the discussion (i.e., those that don't use math notation) are reproduced below. However the full set of notes is available as a PDF. A recorded version of the talk is also available via PIRSA.
Classical teleportation
Let's start by assuming that the world is perfectly classical, that is, let's not worry about the effects of quantum mechanics. Can we do teleportation?
As stated above the problem is trivial and the solution is called a truck. We load the cargo of box A onto a truck, we drive the truck over to lab B, and unload the cargo into box B. Presto exchange-o, we have teleportation!
But that is not the solution we really wanted, so let's build a wall between labs A and B. Now no trucks can get through.
Unfortunately, if this wall is perfect and separates Labs A and B into two different universes, then there is nothing that can be done to move things between the two universes and our poor telenaut Jim will be forever stuck in Lab A.
To make the problem both possible and interesting let's allow a single telephone line between universes A and B. Can we teleport Jim from A to B now?
What we are trying to build now is essentially a fax machine. A giant 3-D fax machine, but a fax machine nonetheless. Into the fax machine at A goes Jim and out of the fax machine at B we get a copy of Jim.
The first objection that you could raise is that we now have two copies of Jim, which may not be ideal. But this is an easily fixed problem. We buy a shredder and attach it to the fax machine at A so that it destroys the originals after they pass through the fax.
So we run Jim through the shredder at A and now there is only on copy at B. Will this be painful for Jim? Maybe (hence the title "brave" telenaut). But remember that the surviving copy at B was made before the "original" at A was put into the shredder. From the point of view of the copy at B, he entered the box at A and exited at B and no pain was ever felt.
A second objection is that we are only getting an approximate copy of Jim at B. Certainly a standard fax machine has a fairly poor resolution, however there is no reason why we can't build very very accurate fax machines.
Now it is true that the copy at B will never be perfect. But that shouldn't be a problem. Even if we used a truck to transport an object from A to B, the object that arrives at B would be slightly different from the one that left A. Along the way it will be shaken a bit or it might get hit by some cosmic rays which will change the state of a few atoms. Our goal should be that the errors that appear when we teleport Jim via the fax machine should be comparable to the changes that would have occurred when moving Jim in a truck. That is, a few very very small errors should be acceptable.
An important thing to notice is that our giant fax machine is not intended to transfer matter and energy, just like a regular fax machine would not be used to transmit blank papers. We always assume that we have the appropriate matter and energy available in Lab B and our goal is simply to assemble it into the pattern of the object placed in Box A.
So can we build a classical teleportation device as described? The answer appears to be yes. That doesn't mean that it is easy. It would be an incredible engineering feat to build a giant 3-D super-accurate fax machine. But it really is just a difficult engineering problem. From the point of view of a physicist there is no reason why this shouldn't be possible.
Quantum teleportation
But now we remember that the world is quantum mechanical, and realize that there is a problem...
What is the fax machine supposed to do?
Fully measures the state of the input
Transmits the results via the phone
Reconstructs the original from the received description.
Step 1 is already impossible in a quantum world because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. We could measure the position of all the particles forming Jim but then we wouldn't get a chance to measure the momentum of those particles. Alternatively, we could measure the momentum but then not the position. One can also envision a mixed strategy where we measure some positions and some momenta, however the uncertainty principle basically guarantees that we will never obtain enough information to rebuild even a modestly good copy of Jim.
It appears that even before running Jim through the shredder, the measurement process will likely destroy the only good copy without obtaining the required information to rebuilt Jim anew.
The surprising result of quantum teleportation is that even though the "measure and reconstruct" procedure does not work, there is an alternative procedure that effectively realizes teleportation in the quantum world.
In fact, it was not until the publication of a 1993 paper by Bennett, Brassard, Crepeau, Jozsa, Peres and Wootters that we realized quantum teleportation was possible. That is some 70 years after the formulation of the theory of quantum mechanics!
Effectively we realized that quantum teleportation, which we thought to be impossible, is only very very hard. What is the difference between the two notions? Traveling faster than the speed of light is impossible, traveling at say 99% of the speed of light is possible but very hard to do.
The upgrade in status from impossible to very very hard may not be very significant to those who would like to actually build such a device. But to a physicist it makes a world of difference, and is a very exciting discovery.
So let me begin by describing the setup for quantum teleportation, which is almost identical to the setup for classical teleportation described above. Again, we will have Labs A and B, each with a box, and we will try to move the contents of box A to box B. The two labs will be separated by a wall and only connected by a phone.
We have to be careful in specifying what kind of phone. If this phone allows sending quantum information back and forth, then the problem of quantum teleportation becomes relatively trivial. It is similar to the classical case when we allowed trucks to move objects between A and B.
The interesting case is when the phone allows only the passage of classical information. You can think of the phone as measuring all signals as they pass through the phone. All standard phones are classical phones.
In effect, what we are asking here is can we use our standard classical communication tools to transmit the state of a quantum system.
Thus far our setup for quantum teleportation is equal to the one for classical teleportation. But there is one important difference. In the quantum case, Labs A and B must begin with something called an entangled quantum state, which will be destroyed by the teleportation procedure.
Roughly speaking an entangled state is a pair of objects that are correlated in a quantum way. Below we will describe a specific example known as the "singlet state" of two spins. However, let us first explore the consequences of this extra requirement for quantum teleportation.
To prepare an entangled state of two particles, one essentially has to start with both particles in the same laboratory, let's say Lab A. Now we have the problem of sending one of the particles to Lab B. In principle, we could use quantum teleportation to send this particle to B, but this process would destroy one entangled state to create another entangled state, a net gain of zero. In any case, we have to worry about how the first entangled state is created.
The only solution is that sometime in the past the wall that separates Lab A and Lab B must not have been there. At that time the scientists from the two labs met, created a large number of entangled states, and carried them to their respective laboratories.
Think of two friends who lived nearby, but now one is moving away. They can create some entangled states that the friend who is moving can carry with him when he leaves, and then they can use those to teleport things back and forth. However, if they had never met in person and have no friends in common (who could have met with both of them) then quantum teleportation becomes impossible.
So returning to our brave telenaut Jim, he will be able to teleport to the labs of his friends. But also he could use two teleportations to travel to the labs of people whom he has never met personally, but who are friends of his friends. Similarly, he can teleport to the labs of the friends of his friends of his friends, and so on. However, teleporting to say a distant planet or to some other place we have never had contact with is impossible.
The entanglement requirement poses a second problem, since as we mentioned above it is destroyed when used. Entanglement is effectively a resource that is slowly depleted as teleportations occur. It can be renewed by meeting in person and then carrying entanglement back from Lab A to Lab B, but it has to be transported without the use of teleportation. In principle this is difficult, otherwise we wouldn't have bothered using teleportation from A to B in the first place. However, the idea is that one difficult journey from A to B can allow in the future many quick transfers from A to B.
I should mention one last important detail of quantum teleportation. In the classical case we decided to run Jim through the shredder in Lab A after "faxing" him to lab B. But it seems like this step was optional, and we could have chosen to end up with two copies of Jim. In the quantum case this is not possible, because quantum information cannot be copied. The only way to teleport an object to Lab B is to destroy the object at Lab A.
Philosophically, one can say that if there can only ever be one copy of Jim at any time, and the copy of B survives the teleportation process in a pain free manner, then whatever is destroyed at in Lab A could not have been a copy of Jim.
However, we shall leave moral questions of this sort to the philosophers, and instead turn our attention now to the mathematics of quantum teleportation.
The mathematics of quantum teleportation
To view the full discussion of the mathematics of teleportation you will need to continue reading the PDF version of these notes. Alternatively, you can skip ahead to the discussion below covering a few important issues involving teleportation.
Can quantum teleportation be used for superluminal communication?
If we tried to define a colloquial notion of teleportation it would probably have two main properties: That objects move from A to B without "passing" through the space in between and that it be done instantaneously, or at least very very fast.
Roughly speaking, our teleportation schemes satisfy the first property. However, thus far we haven't discussed the speed at which teleportation should occur.
Teleportation as defined here requires sending a message from Lab A to Lab B using a regular phone. The message will travel at the speed of light from A to B. Therefore, our version of teleportation cannot be instantaneous and does not allow for travel faster than the speed of light.
In fact, teleportation might be significantly slower than light travel if the measurement and reconstruction procedures are slow. However, if we are teleporting a person (or some other system that is not static) then the measurement and reconstruction procedures need to be performed nearly instantaneously. After all, if you get to see as your feet are slowly measured and disassembled, the process would likely not be pain-free.
At first glance, though, there seems to be a way to use the teleportation procedure for superluminal communication. That is, by measuring the spins in Lab A, we are somehow instantaneously modifying the spin in Lab B. Whether or not this is a good description of what is going on depends which interpretation of quantum mechanics is used to describe the system (there are actually many interpretations of quantum mechanics which describe the above process in very different ways). However, all interpretations of quantum mechanics agree on one fact: that such tricks cannot be used for superluminal communication.
The basic idea of such a proof is to check that, when averaged over all the outcomes obtained in Lab A, any measurement done in Lab B will always yield 50-50 outcomes, no matter what state is being teleported. Therefore the measurements in Lab B cannot convey any useful information, at least until such a time when the correction operators have been applied.
Unfortunately all modern theories of physics predict that both faster than light travel and faster than light communication are impossible.
Real experiments that do teleportation
A number of groups conducted experimental realizations of the quantum teleportation procedure described above in the years 1997 and 1998, using a variety of different systems such as the spin (or polarization) of photons and the spin of atoms. In many cases Labs A and B were the left and right side of a table, and the spins were teleported roughly 50 cm.
The reason distance becomes relevant has to do with the distribution of entanglement which becomes harder as the separation between the two "labs" increases. A second related problem is the storing of entanglement which can only be done for very short periods, so in practice most early experiments distribute the entanglement only moments before it is to be used for teleportation. However, these experiments were sufficient to convince most physicists that teleportation of spins is possible.
Since 1997 there have also been many improved versions of the teleportation experiment. For instance, the distance has been increased in one experiment to 600 m, and the accuracy of the teleported state has also been slowly improving.
However, at the time this document was written, most experiments have only teleported a single spin. In principle, if you can teleport one spin, then you can teleport many spins simply by repeating the experiment in series many times. But this roughly only works on disjoint spins. To teleport a single object comprised of many spins is still out of reach of present day experiments.
In the future, though, we should see experiments that teleport large numbers of spins. Certainly, if a practical quantum computer is ever built then the same technology would likely allow us to teleport a few thousand spins. It is likely that this will happen within the next 30--50 years, if not sooner.
But will we ever be able to teleport people?
There are some 10^29 matter particles comprising a human person, each of which has position and momentum degrees of freedom in addition to spin. In principle, we might also need to teleport the photons, gluons and other energy particles comprising a person. Teleporting all that is going to be significantly harder than a few thousand spins. It is probably a good guess that teleportation of humans will never be possible.
Are we at least sure that it is possible to teleport humans in principle?
While most scientists expect that ten, hundreds and maybe even thousands of spins will be teleported in practice some day, the teleportation of a human being, even in principle, is actually still a controversial subject.
I would roughly divide people into three schools of thought.
The first group of physicists would argue that there is a soul, consciousness or spirit that permeates the human body that cannot be described by science. Unfortunately, in this view by definition we are prevented from using science to determine if teleportation is feasible.
A second group of physicists would disagree with human teleportation because of something known as the measurement problem. Roughly speaking, any object that is capable of performing quantum measurements cannot itself be a quantum object, and therefore cannot be teleported using quantum teleportation. In this view, small numbers of particles are quantum but at some point when you combine enough particles you end up with a classical or "observer" object, which cannot be described by the laws of quantum mechanics.
In principle, such a belief will have experimental consequences, as we should be able to determine at what point do objects stop being quantum mechanical. At the moment there is neither any experimental evidence for such observer objects nor even a consistent theory that could describe them. On the other hand, it is also true that presently it is very hard to experimentally study large quantum systems, and so it is quite possible that something interesting will happen when a large enough system is examined.
The third school of though (which I am partial to) would say that all objects big and small are quantum mechanical, and therefore in principle can be teleported. What happened with the measurement problem? I would argue that measurements never actually occur. What happens is that the observer becomes entangled with the system he is measuring, and this appears to the observer as if a measurement was performed. The mathematics for this process works out quite nicely, but it does leave the nagging question of why does it feel like we are constantly measuring the world?
Of course, the final answer to whether teleportation of people is possible even in principle must wait for the formulation of a complete theory of physics, one which unifies relativity with quantum mechanics.
In the meantime, one can ask if there any applications for teleporting thousands of spins?
The answer is probably yes. In the future it is likely that quantum computers (i.e., computers capable of processing quantum information) will be built and may even be as ubiquitous as classical computers are today. These computers will need to exchange quantum information. One way these exchanges of information can occur is via a quantum phone, that is, a device capable of sending and received quantum messages. But when such phones are not available, the alternative is to do teleportation using a regular phone. So don't be surprised if some day in the next 100 years you see a quantum teleportation device for sale in your local computer store.
1. Sachin Tendulkar is the Highest Run scorer in the One day Internationals
2. Sachin Tendulkar is the Highest Run scorer in the Test Cricket
3. Most number of hundreds in the ODI 46
4. Most number of hundreds in the Tests 47
5. Most number of nineties in the ODI
6. Most number of man of the matches in the ODI's -61
7. Most number of man of the series(15) in ODI's
8. Best average for man of the matches in ODI's
9. First Cricketer to pass 10000 run in the ODI
10. First Cricketer to pass 15000, 16000, 17000 run in the ODI
11. He is the highest run scorer in the world cup (1,796 at an average of 59.87 as on 20 March 2007)
12. Most number of the man of the matches in the world cup
13. Most number of runs 1996 world cup 523 runs in the 1996 Cricket World Cup at an average of 87.16
14. Most number of runs in the 2003 world cup 673 runs in 2003 Cricket World Cup, highest by any player in a single Cricket World Cup
15. Man of the Tournament in the 2003 Cricket World Cup.
16. Most number of Fifties in ODI's
17. He is the only player to be in top 10 ICC ranking for 10 years.
18. He is one of the three batsmen to surpass 11,000 runs in Test cricket, and the first Indian to do so.
19. First and only cricketer to get Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna. India's highest sporting honor
20. In 2003, Wisden rated Tendulkar as d No. 1 and Richards at No. 2 in all time Greatest ODI player
21. In 2002, Wisden rated him as the second greatest Test batsman after Sir Donald Bradman.
22. he was involved in unbroken 664-run partnership in a Harris Shield game in 1988 with friend and team mate Vinod Kambli.
23. Tendulkar is the only player to score a century in all three of his Ranji Trophy, Duleep Trophy and Irani Trophy debuts
24. In 1992, at the age of 19, Tendulkar became the first overseas born player to represent Yorkshire
25. Tendulkar has been granted the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, Arjuna Award and Padma vibhushan by Indian government. He is the only Indian cricketer to get all of them. And the only cricketer to receive Padma vibhushan.
26. Tendulkar has scored over 1000 runs in a calendar year in ODI's 8 times
27. Tendulkar has scored 1894 runs in calendar year in ODI's most by any batsman
28.First batsman in the history who was given out through third umpire.
29. He has the least percentage of the man of the matches awards won when team looses a match. Out of his 61 man of the match awards only 7 times India has lost.
30. Tendulkar most number man of match awards against Australia
31. Tendulkar was the first batsman in history to score over 50 centuries in international cricket
32. Tendulkar was the first batsman in history to score over 75 centuries in international cricket: 93 centuries
33. Has the most overall runs in cricket, (ODIs+Tests+Twenty20s), as of 30 June 2007 he had accumulated almost 26,000 runs overall.
34. Sachin Tendulkar with Sourav Ganguly hold the world record for the maximum number of runs scored by the opening partnership. They have put together 6,271 runs in 128 matches
35. The 20 century partnerships for opening pair with Sourav Ganguly is a world record
36. Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid hold the world record for the highest partnership in ODI matches when they scored 331 runs against New Zealand in 1999 (Sachin 186*, Dravid 153)
37. Sachin Tendulkar has been involved in six 200 run partnerships in ODI matches - a record that he shares with Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid
38. Most Centuries in a calendar year: 9 ODI centuries in 1998
39. Only player to have over 100 innings of 50+ runs (41 Centuries and 87 Fifties)(as of 18th Nov, 2007)
40. the only player ever to cross the 13,000-14,000 - 15, 000and 16,000 run marks IN ODI.
41. He hit the fastest double century in any international match
42. Maximum number of 150 plus scores in ODIs
43. Tendulkar has scored over 1000 ODI runs against all major Cricketing nations.
44. Sachin was the fastest to reach 10,000 runs taking 259 innings and has the highest batting average among batsmen with over 10,000 ODI runs
45. Most number of Stadium Appearances: 90 different Grounds
46. Consecutive ODI Appearances: 185
47. On his debut, Sachin Tendulkar was the second youngest debutant in the world
48. When Tendulkar scored his maiden century in 1990, he was the second youngest to score a century
49. Tendulkar's record of five test centuries before he turned 20 is a current world record
50. Tendulkar holds the current record (217 against NZ in 1999/00 Season) for the highest score in Test cricket by an Indian when captaining the side
51. Tendulkar has scored centuries against all test playing nations. He was the third batman to achieve the distinction after Steve Waugh and Gary Kirsten
52. Tendulkar has 4 seasons in test cricket with 1000 or more runs - 2002 (1392 runs), 1999 (1088 runs), 2001 (1003 runs) and 1997 (1000 runs).[6] Gavaskar is the only other Indian with four seasons of 1000+ runs
53. He is second most number of seasons with over 1000 runs in world.
54. On 3 January 2007 Sachin Tendulkar (5751) edged past Brian Lara's (5736) world record of runs scored in Tests away from home
55. Tendulkar and Brian Lara are the fastest to score 10,000 runs in Test cricket history. Both of them achieved this in 195 innings
56. Second Indian after Sunil Gavaskar to make over 10,000 runs in Test matches
57. Became the first Indian to surpass the 11,000 Test run mark and the third International player behind Allan Border and Brian Lara.
58. Tendulkar is fourth on the list of players with most Test caps. Steve Waugh (168 Tests), Allan Border (158 Tests), have appeared in more games than Tendulkar.
59. Tendulkar has played the most number of Test Matches for India (Kapil Dev is second with 131 Test appearances).
60. First to 25,000 international runs
61. Tendulkar's 25,000+ runs in international cricket include 17000+ runs in ODI's, 13,000+ Tests runs and 10 runs in the lone Twenty20 that India has played.
62. On December 10, 2005, Tendulkar made his 35th century in Tests at Delhi against Sri Lanka. He surpassed Sunil Gavaskar's record of 34 centuries to become the man with the most number of hundreds in Test cricket.
63. Tendulkar is the only player who has 150 wkts and more than 15000 runs in ODI
64. Tendulkar is the only player who has 40 wkts and more than 11000 runs in Tests
65. Sachin hit the first double century in the 40 year history of one day internationals
66. Maximum number of boundaries in a single innings
A whole-body transplant or brain transplant is a hypothetical operation that would move the brain of one being into the body of another. It is a procedure distinct from head transplant, which involves transferring the entire head to a new body, as opposed to the brain only. Theoretically, a person with advanced organ failure could be given a new and functional body while keeping their own personality and memories.
Although many scientists have challenged the feasibility of this process, few would say that it was not possible given current research into organ transplant and human cloning. Some bioethicists[who?] argue that there are difficult moral problems involved in either harvesting a brain-dead body, especially one deliberately created using human cloning, or otherwise acquiring a body (say, of a criminal due to be executed for a crime,[citation needed] or an individual who is not dead but is soon to die of a brain-based illness).[citation needed] Though not feasible at current levels of technology and scientific understanding, this and similar concepts have been explored in various forms of fiction.
Existing challenges One of the most significant barriers to the procedure is the inability of nerve tissue to heal properly; scarred nerve tissue does not transmit signals well (this is why a spinal cord injury is so devastating). However, recent research at the Wistar Institute of the University of Pennsylvania involving tissue-regenerating mice (known as MRL mice) may provide pointers for further research as to how to regenerate nerves without scarring. There is also a potential problem of the new interface at the spinal cord, in that even if all the nerves are connected successfully, they may still be connected wrongly, in some cases, thus not transmitting the same information as the same nerve connection in the old body. For example, a nerve that used to control the right index finger's muscle group might be connected to a different finger's muscle group, or another body part entirely. If this were to happen to a large number of connections, the person undergoing the transplant might end up with a body which transmitted sensory input to the wrong destination, making it incomprehensible and potentially requiring many years of rehabilitation.
Also, for the procedure to be practical, the age of the donated body must be sufficient: an adult brain cannot fit into a skull that has not reached its full growth, which occurs at age 9–12 years.
There is an advantage however, the brain is an immunologically privileged organ, so rejection would not be a problem, unlike other organs, say the liver, which is usually aggressively rejected by the host's immune system.
Partial brain transplant
This section may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (November 2010)
An arguably more reasonable scenario is a partial brain transplant involving only enough tissue to provide key memories and a sense of continuity of identity. A fairly large but indeterminate amount of the brain is devoted to processing and controlling sensory, motor, and autonomic functions such as vision, olfaction, movement, appetite, etc.; transplanting these portions is likely to be difficult and, if the goal is to transfer memories and/or identity, unnecessary. The recipient body of such a transplant probably would have to possess a naïve and never-conscious brain or partial brain, such as in a never-conscious clonedsoma. This is the premise of I of Persistence, a human life-extension manifesto and science fiction story. In that story, the older transplanted brain tissue is eventually removed and replaced with youthful tissue, restoring complete youthfulness with continuity (or persistence) of conscious identity.
In 1982 Dr. Dorothy T. Krieger, chief of endocrinology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, achieved notable success with a partial brain transplant in mice.A partial brain transplant could accomplish essentially the same goal — movement of a person's "identity" from one body to another[citation needed] — and thus qualify as a whole-body transplant no less than a full brain transplant. As Dr. Krieger demonstrated, barriers to accomplishing this feat might be much lower than transplantation of the entire brain.
In 1998, a team of surgeons from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center attempted to transplant a group of brain cells to Alma Cerasini, who had suffered a severe stroke that caused the loss of mobility in her right limbs as well as limited speech. The team's hope was that the cells would correct the listed damage.
Transplantation of a human brain from one body into another has appeared on occasion in popular literature. The intended effect is most often either horrific or comedic, though many of these stories explore the medical, ethical, legal, and other issues that would surround the procedure.
The transplant has been a common subject in horror films, most notably Frankenstein.
The Ultra-Humanite, one of the main villains opposing the Golden Age Superman and Justice Society of America, often "died" at the end of an encounter, only to have his surviving brain transplanted into a new (not always human) body by robots and/or henchmen.
The novel I Will Fear No Evil (1970) by Robert A. Heinlein features an elderly wealthy man who has his brain transplanted into the body of his deceased secretary.
The comedy movie The Man with Two Brains (1983), starring Steve Martin, revolves around brain transplantation.
Frederik Pohl's novel Black Star Rising (1985) features a character who has had parts of multiple brains grafted onto his, each conveying a separate personality.
The TV movie Who Is Julia? (1986) revolves also around brain transplantation.
The novel Eva by Peter Dickinson focuses on the eponymous 14-year-old girl whose brain is transplanted into the body of a chimpanzee.
The premise for the TV series Now and Again (1999–2000) was the transplantation of lead character Michael Wiseman's brain into a genetically-engineered body to make him into a top-secret super-agent.
On the fictionalized version of the TV program Days of our Lives as shown on Friends, the dead body of Dr. Drake Ramoray, the character played by Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc), has the brain of another character transplanted into it.
The novel My Brother's Keeper by Charles Sheffield is based on a partial brain transplant. Identical twins suffer major injuries in a crash, including damage to one side of each of their heads. One twin is dying from the loss of vital organs, so a surgeon saves part of his brain by using it to replace part of his brother's.
In the Cartoon NetworkmovieRe-Animated (2006), the main character Jimmy Roberts (Dominic Janes) has to receive an emergency brain transplant because of a freak accident. He receives the brain of the late Milt Appleday (a parody of Walt Disney), and can see cartoon characters with his new brain.
In the novel Airhead (2008) by Meg Cabot, a normal girl gets a whole body transplant and thereafter lives as a supermodel.
In the film The Man with the Screaming Brain, a similar concept is explored by having two partial brains inhabiting the same body.
Wes Craven's book Fountain Society (1999) deals with this subject.
The Korean movie The Game (2007), directed by In-ho Yun, revolves around brain transplantation.
In Starsiege (1999), a mecha-style vehicle simulation game, Harabec is dead, and the brain of Victor Petresun is occupying his body.
Similar concepts
The whole-body transplant is just one of several means of putting a consciousness into a new body that have been explored by both scientists and writers.
A similar procedure often found in science fiction is the transfer of one consciousness to another without moving the brain. This is found in many sources, most often a body swap between two characters of an ongoing television series; it occurs in the original Star Trek series twice, as well as Freaky Friday, Farscape, Stargate SG-1, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dollhouse, Red Dwarf, Avatar; even in Archie comics. Since there is no movement of the brain(s), however, this is not quite the same as a whole-body transplant.
In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Emperor Palpatine is able to transfer his consciousness into clone bodies. In a sense, this allows him to return to life after the Battle of Endor, as well as other events where his current body dies. The clone bodies aren't quite as good as his original body and waste quickly due to the decaying power of the Dark Side of the Force. Upon realizing this, he tries to take of the body of Anakin Solo, but is unsuccessful and eventually meets his final end.
Similar in many ways to this is the idea of mind uploading, promoted by Marvin Minsky and others with a mechanistic view of natural intelligence and an optimistic outlook regarding artificial intelligence. It is also a goal of Raëlism, a small cult based in Florida, France, and Quebec. However, while 'transplanting' sees the ultimate goal as being a new body optimized for that brain by genetics, proteomics, and/or other medical procedures and a transfer of the brain to that body, in the almost equally speculative procedure of 'downloading', the brain itself moves nowhere and may even be physically destroyed or discarded; the goal is rather to duplicate the information patterns contained within the brain.
Another similar literary theme, though different from either procedure described above, is the transplanting of a human brain into an artificial, usually robotic, body. Examples of this include: Caprica; Fullmetal Alchemist; Ghost In The Shell; RoboCop; the DC Comics superhero Robotman; the Cybermen from the Doctor Who television series; the cymeks in the Legends of Dune series; or full-body cyborgs in many manga or works in the cyberpunk genre. In Star Trek, the episode "Spock's Brain" involves transplantation of the eponymous organ into a large computer-like structure, and in "I, Mudd" Uhura is offered immortality in an android body. The novel Harvest of Stars by Poul Anderson features many central characters who undergo such transplants, and deals with the difficult decisions facing a human contemplating such a procedure.
The Nibiru collision is a supposed disastrous encounter between the Earth and a large planetary object (either a collision or a near-miss) which certain groups believe will take place in the early 21st century. Believers in this doomsday event usually refer to this object as Planet X or Nibiru. The idea that a planet-sized object could possibly collide with or pass by Earth in the near future is not supported by any scientific evidence and has been rejected as pseudoscience by astronomers and planetary scientists. The idea was first put forward in 1995 by Nancy Lieder, founder of the website ZetaTalk. Lieder describes herself as a contactee with the ability to receive messages from extra-terrestrials from the Zeta Reticuli star system through an implant in her brain. She states that she was chosen to warn mankind that the object would sweep through the inner Solar System in May 2003 (though that date was later abandoned) causing Earth to undergo a pole shift that would destroy most of humanity. The predicted collision has subsequently spread beyond Lieder's website and has been embraced by numerous Internet doomsday groups, most of which link the event to the 2012 phenomenon. Although the name "Nibiru" is derived from the works of late ancient astronaut writer Zecharia Sitchin and his interpretations of Babylonian and Sumerian mythology, Sitchin denied any connection between his work and various claims of a coming apocalypse.
V838 Mon, a star with an expanding light echo, purported as photographic evidence of Nibiru
The idea of the Nibiru encounter originated with Nancy Lieder, a Wisconsin woman who claims that as a girl she was contacted by gray extraterrestrials called Zetas, who implanted a communications device in her brain. In 1995, she founded the website ZetaTalk to disseminate her ideas.[2] Lieder first came to public attention on Internet newsgroups during the build-up to Comet Hale-Bopp's 1997 perihelion. She stated, speaking as the Zetas, that "The Hale-Bopp comet does not exist. It is a fraud, perpetrated by those who would have the teeming masses quiescent until it is too late. Hale-Bopp is nothing more than a distant star, and will draw no closer."[3] She claimed that the Hale-Bopp story was manufactured to distract people from the imminent arrival of a large planetary object, "Planet X", which would soon pass by Earth and destroy civilization.[3] After Hale-Bopp's perihelion revealed it as one of the brightest and longest-observed comets of the last century,[4] Lieder removed the first two sentences of her initial statement from her site, though they can still be found in Google's archives.[3] Her claims eventually made the New York Times.[5] Lieder described Planet X as roughly four times the size of the Earth, and said that its perigee would occur on May 27, 2003, resulting in the Earth's rotation ceasing for exactly 5.9 terrestrial days. This would be followed by the Earth's pole destabilising in a pole shift (a physical pole shift, with the Earth's pole physically moving, rather than a geomagnetic reversal) caused by magnetic attraction between the Earth's core and the magnetism of the passing planet. This in turn would disrupt the Earth's magnetic core and lead to subsequent displacement of the Earth's crust.[6] Lieder's Planet X idea first spread beyond her website in 2001, when Mark Hazlewood, a former member of the ZetaTalk community, took her ideas and published them in a book: Blindsided: Planet X Passes in 2003. Lieder would later accuse him of being a confidence trickster.[7] A Japanese cult called the Pana Wave Laboratory, which blocked off roads and rivers with white cloths to protect itself from electromagnetic attacks, also warned that the world would end in May 2003 after the approach of a tenth planet.[8] Roughly a week before the supposed arrival of Planet X, Lieder appeared on KROQ radio in Los Angeles, and advised listeners to put their pets down in anticipation of the event. When asked if she had done so, she replied that she had, and that "The puppies are in a happy place." She also advised that "A dog makes a good meal".[9] After the 2003 date passed without incident, Lieder said that it was merely a "White Lie ... to fool the establishment,"[10] and said that to disclose the true date would give those in power enough time to declare martial law and trap people in cities during the shift, leading to their deaths.[11] Many Internet sites continue to proclaim that Lieder's object is en route to Earth, often citing its arrival date as December, 2012. This date has gathered many apocalyptic associations, as it is the end of the current cycle (baktun) in the long count in the Mayan calendar. Several writers have published books connecting the collision with 2012.[12]
Zecharia Sitchin and Sumer
Although Lieder originally referred to the object as "Planet X", it has become deeply associated with Nibiru, a planet from the works of ancient astronaut proponent Zecharia Sitchin, particularly his book The 12th Planet. According to Sitchin's interpretation of Babylonian religious texts, which contravenes every conclusion reached by credited scholars on the subject,[13][14] a giant planet (called Nibiru or Marduk) passes by Earth every 3,600 years and allows its sentient inhabitants to interact with humanity. These beings, which Sitchin identified with the Annunaki of Sumerian myth, would become humanity's first gods.[15] Lieder first made the connection between Nibiru and her Planet X on her site in 1996 ("Planet X does exist, and it is the 12th Planet, one and the same.").[16] However, Sitchin, who died in 2010, denied any connection between his work and Lieder's claims. In 2007, partly in response to Lieder's proclamations, Sitchin published a book, The End of Days, which set the time for the last passing of Nibiru by Earth at 556 BC, which would mean, given the object's supposed 3,600-year orbit, that it would return sometime around AD 2900.[17] He did however say that he believed that the Annunaki might return earlier by spaceship, and that the timing of their return would coincide with the shift from the astrological Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius, sometime between 2090 and 2370.[18]
Other names
Believers in Planet X/Nibiru have given it many names since it was first proposed. All are, in fact, names for other real or hypothetical Solar System objects that bear little resemblance to Nibiru as described by Lieder or Sitchin.
Planet X
Lieder drew the name Planet X from the hypothetical planet once searched for by astronomers to account for discrepancies in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune.[16] In 1894, Bostonian astronomer Percival Lowell became convinced that the planets Uranus and Neptune had slight discrepancies in their orbits. He concluded that they were being tugged by the gravity of another, more distant planet, which he called "Planet X".[19] However, nearly a century of searching failed to turn up any evidence for such an object (Pluto was initially believed to be Planet X, but was later determined to be too small).[20] In 1992, astronomer Myles Standish showed that the supposed discrepancies in the planets' orbits were illusory; the product of an overestimation of the mass of Neptune.[21] Today astronomers accept that Planet X does not exist.[22]
Nemesis
Believers in Planet X/Nibiru have often confused it with Nemesis,[23] a hypothetical star first proposed by physicist Richard A. Muller. In 1984, Muller postulated that mass extinctions were not random, but appeared to occur in the fossil record with a loose periodicity that ranged from 26–34 million years. He attributed this supposed pattern to a heretofore undetected companion to the Sun, either a brown dwarf, a dim red dwarf or a gas giant planet, lying in an elliptical, 26-million-year orbit. This object, which he named Nemesis, would, once every 26 million years, pass through the Oort cloud, the shell of over a trillion icy objects believed to be the source of long-period comets that orbit at thousands of times Pluto's distance from the Sun. Nemesis's gravity would then disturb the comets' orbits and send them into the inner Solar System, causing the Earth to be bombarded. However, to date no direct evidence of Nemesis has been found.[24] Though the idea of Nemesis appears similar to the Nibiru collision, they are, in fact, very different, as Nemesis, if it existed, would have an orbital period thousands of times longer, and would never come near Earth itself.[25]
Eris
Still others refer to the object as Eris;[26] however, Eris (provisional designation: 2003 UB313) is a dwarf planet only slightly larger than Pluto[27] with a well-determined orbit that never takes it closer than 5.5 billion km from the Earth.[28] Astronomer Mike Brown, who discovered Eris, believes the confusion results from both the real Eris and the imaginary Nibiru having extremely elliptical orbits.[26]
Tyche
Others have tied it to Tyche;[29] the name proposed by John Matese and Daniel Whitmire of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for an object they believe to be influencing the orbits of comets in the Oort cloud.[30] The name, after the "good sister" of the Greek goddess Nemesis, was chosen to distinguish it from the similar Nemesis hypothesis as, unlike Nemesis, Matese and Whitmire do not believe that their object poses a threat to Earth.[31] However, this object, if it exists, would, like Nemesis, have an orbit hundreds of times longer than that proposed for Nibiru, and never come near the inner Solar System.[29]
Comet Elenin
Some have also associated Nibiru with Comet Elenin,[32] a long-period comet discovered by Russian astronomer Leonid Elenin on December 10, 2010.[33] Accounting for errors in the known trajectory, on 16 October 2011, Elenin will pass 0.2338 AU (34,980,000 km; 21,730,000 mi) from the Earth,[34] slightly closer than the planet Venus.[35] Nevertheless, this has led some conspiracy websites to conclude that it is on a collision course, that it is as large as Jupiter or even a brown dwarf, and even that the name of the discoverer, Leonid Elenin, is, in fact, code for ELE, or an Extinction Level Event.[32] Although the sizes of comets are difficult to determine without close observation, Comet Elenin is likely to be less than 10 km in diameter.[36] Elenin himself estimates that the comet nucleus is roughly 3–4 km in diameter.[37] This would make it millions of times smaller than the supposed Nibiru. Comet hysteria is not uncommon.[38] In 2011, Leonid Elenin ran a simulation on his blog in which he increased the mass of the comet to that of a brown dwarf (0.05 solar masses). He demonstrated that its gravity would have caused noticeable changes in the orbit of Saturn years before its arrival in the inner Solar System.[39]
Scientific criticism
Astronomers point out that such an object so close to Earth would be easily visible to the naked eye (Jupiter and Saturn are both visible to the naked eye, and are dimmer than Nibiru would be at their distances), and would be creating noticeable effects in the orbits of the outer planets.[40] Some counter this by claiming that the object has been hiding behind the Sun for several years, though this would be geometrically impossible.[12] Images of Nibiru near the Sun taken by amateurs are usually the result of lens flares, false images of the Sun created by reflections within the lens.[41] Mike Brown notes that if this object's orbit were as described, it would only have lasted in the Solar System for a million years or so before Jupiter expelled it, and that there is no way another object's magnetic field could have such an effect on Earth.[42] Lieder's assertions that the approach of Nibiru would cause the Earth's rotation to stop or its axis to shift violate the laws of physics. In his rebuttal of Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, which made the same claim that the Earth's rotation could be stopped and then restarted, Carl Sagan noted that, "the energy required to brake the Earth is not enough to melt it, although it would result in a noticeable increase in temperature: The oceans would [be] raised to the boiling point of water ... [Also,] how does the Earth get started up again, rotating at approximately the same rate of spin? The Earth cannot do it by itself, because of the law of the conservation of angular momentum."[43] In a 2009 interview with the Discovery Channel, Mike Brown noted that, while it is not impossible that the Sun has a distant planetary companion, such an object would have to be lying very far from the observed regions of the Solar System to have no gravitational effect on the other planets. A Mars-sized object could lie undetected at 300 AU (10 times the distance of Neptune); a Jupiter-sized object at 30,000 AU (1000 times the distance of Neptune). To travel 1000 AU (30 times the distance of Neptune) in two years, an object would need to be moving at 2400 km/s — faster than the galactic escape velocity. At that speed, any object would be shot out of the Solar System, and then out of the Milky Way galaxy into intergalactic space.[44]
Conspiracy theories
Many believers in the imminent approach of Planet X/Nibiru accuse NASA of deliberately covering up visual evidence of its existence.[45] One such accusation involves the IRAS infrared space observatory, launched in 1983. The satellite briefly made headlines due to an "unknown object" that was at first described as "possibly as large as the giant planet Jupiter and possibly so close to Earth that it would be part of this Solar System".[46] This newspaper article has been cited by proponents of the collision idea, beginning with Lieder herself, as evidence for the existence of Nibiru.[47] However, further analysis revealed that of several unidentified objects, nine were distant galaxies and the tenth was "intergalactic cirrus"; none were found to be Solar System bodies.[48] Another accusation frequently made by websites predicting the collision is that the U.S. government built the South Pole Telescope to track Nibiru's trajectory, and that the object has been imaged optically.[49] However, the SPT (which is not funded by NASA) is a radio telescope, and cannot take optical images. Its South Pole location was chosen due to the low-humidity environment, and there is no way an approaching object could be seen only from the South Pole.[50] The "picture" of Nibiru posted on YouTube was revealed, in fact, to be a Hubble image of the expanding light echo around the star V838 Mon.[49]
Public reaction
The impact of the public fear of the Nibiru collision has been especially felt by professional astronomers. Mike Brown now says that Nibiru is the most common pseudoscientific topic he is asked about.[42] David Morrison, director of SETI, CSI Fellow and Senior Scientist at NASA's Astrobiology Institute at Ames Research Center, says he receives 20 to 25 emails a week about the impending arrival of Nibiru; some frightened, others angry and naming him as part of the conspiracy to keep the truth of the impending apocalypse from the public, and still others asking whether or not they should kill themselves, their children or their pets.[45][51] Half of these emails are from outside the U.S.[12] "Planetary scientists are being driven to distraction by Nibiru," notes science writer Govert Schilling, "And it is not surprising; you devote so much time, energy and creativity to fascinating scientific research, and find yourself on the tracks of the most amazing and interesting things, and all the public at large is concerned about is some crackpot theory about clay tablets, god-astronauts and a planet that doesn't exist."[1] Morrison states that he hopes that the non-arrival of Nibiru could serve as a teaching moment for the public, instructing them on "rational thought and baloney detection", but doubts that will happen.[45] Morrison noted in a lecture recorded on FORA.tv that there was a huge disconnect between the large number of people on the Internet who believed in Nibiru's arrival in 2012 and the majority of scientists who have never heard of it. To date he is the only major NASA scientist to speak out regularly against the Nibiru phenomenon.[51]
Hachiko was given away after his master's death, but he routinely escaped, showing up again and again at his old home. After time, Hachiko apparently realized that Professor Ueno no longer lived at the house. So he went to look for his master at the train station where he had accompanied him so many times before. Each day, Hachiko waited for Professor Ueno to return. And each day he didn't see his friend among the commuters at the station.
What an incredibly touching story! Hachiko was such a great dog! Such stories make you wish to have a pet!
Hachiko was given away after his master's death, but he routinely escaped, showing up again and again at his old home. After time, Hachiko apparently realized that Professor Ueno no longer lived at the house. So he went to look for his master at the train station where he had accompanied him so many times before. Each day, Hachiko waited for Professor Ueno to return. And each day he didn't see his friend among the commuters at the station.
What an incredibly touching story! Hachiko was such a great dog! Such stories make you wish to have a pet!
